Wilmington, NC News

Archive for June, 2013

BOONE, NC (AP) — A Boone inspector says a hotel pool heater that leaked carbon monoxide and killed a Washington state couple and later a South Carolina boy was installed without the knowledge of the town’s inspection department.

Todd Miller with the Boone Planning and Inspections Department says the Best Western Blue Ridge Plaza never told the city about the new heater. Miller says the hotel did not apply for a required permit for the change.

Officials say carbon monoxide poisoning killed 73-year-old Daryl Jenkins and 72-year-old Shirley Jenkins of Longview, Wash., on April 16. They were staying in a room directly over the pool’s maintenance room.

Eleven-year-old Jeffrey Lee Williams of Rock Hill, SC, died in the same room June 8.

An attorney for the hotel did not respond to a message.

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — The North Carolina Senate is set to pass tax overhaul legislation that gradually repeals corporate taxes and lowers individual income rates.

The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a plan that tentatively passed last week mostly along party lines. The plan cuts taxes by billions but doesn’t include a major rewrite of the sales tax code, which led the author of a more comprehensive plan to resign his post as Senate finance co-chairman in protest.

The plan has been attacked from the right as not far-reaching enough and from the left as a major drain on state resources.

Senate lawmakers will likely have to meet with their House counterparts to reach a compromise on their separate tax plans.

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)